3 minutes with Nico Rosberg

Williams driver Nico Rosberg is one of the main people to benefit from the appeal court decision into the legality of the diffusers. He believes that it will mean that the status quo in F1 will be maintained for a few more races, with Brawn, Toyota, Red Bull and Williams the top four teams. He has a car which appears to be consistently strong at all tracks, something you couldn’t say about last year’s car.

Rosberg has his tail up at the moment because he has been the pace-setter in practice, strong in qualifying and the races. His performance in Malaysia, where he got a great start and led strongly at the start has really put him on the map again. He has also spoken out strongly about the dangers of twilight racing and is starting to mature as a Grand Prix driver.

You must be delighted with the diffuser decision?
“Yes, pleased we can maintain the advantage. Brawn is quickest and Toyota second quickest and then it is close between us and Red Bull. I think Red Bull is ever so slightly ahead of us. It’s looking good for us at the moment, we have a good possibility to score some good points and maybe a podium with a bit of luck. We can be relatively far up the grid.”

How long do you think it will be before the other teams get their diffusers to work?
“It’s going to take many races for them to attempt to make their cars work with the diffuser and it’s not a fact that it’s going to be quicker. It’s not straightforward. It’s going to take a whole load of time. We need to go into the rest of the season thinking that we will develop very well and stay where we are and even move up, rather than take advantage now and be scared that we are going to be caught up.”

When you follow another car with a double diffuser does it make it harder to overtake, as people are saying?
“No, definitely not.”

Do you think Brawn will dominate the whole season?
“There is a very strong chance, yes. But the thing is that the development rate is massive because of these new rules, we can put a new part on the car and be quicker from one week to the next go two tenths quicker. It can go so quick. A few months down the road it may look different.”

You led strongly in Sepang, you must be very pleased?
“It was great and the performance was there after the start we were pulling away and showing strong pace, It didn’t go our way at the end with the weather, but we got some good points. I’m not disappointed.”

When will you use KERS?
“There is no date when it is coming. Not decided yet.”

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Tapas and optimism from Williams

Just had a very enjoyable day at Williams HQ in Grove where a few of us were treated to a series of briefings by the team. The drivers Nico Rosberg and Kazuki Nakajima were there, we had a talk around the car by technical director Sam Michael and then a briefing on the team’s health, FOTA and other general F1 matters from Sir Frank Williams and team CEO Adam Parr.

They even threw in some lunch, all very trendy, with small tapas-sized portions and lots of them. Being Williams though it was roast beef and fish and chips in the tiny bowls rather than some continental nonsense. Rhubarb crumble and crème brulee for pudding. Hardly anyone drank any wine except a few of the older generation journos…

Williams is a no-nonsense team which has been living beyond its means for the last couple of seasons in an effort to keep up and which is therefore grateful to the credit crunch for forcing its main rivals finally to agree cost saving measures. I actually think that Williams could have been in serious trouble if FOTA had not happened and with it the agreement to slash costs. Now Williams will be able to compete more fairly and will be able to pay off their debt. Despite losing RBS, Baugar and Petrobras as sponsors, they are more diversified than some other teams, a point CEO Adam Parr made. It was interesting to see Sir Frank together with Adam. He defers to him more and more and you could see that he has great trust in his number two. Could be another handover soon a la Ron Dennis…

The drivers spoke with optimism about the season ahead. The headline quote of the day was Nico Rosberg saying that he wants to be in a top car by 2010 and although he hopes it can be with Williams, that is his clear priority. He looked fantastic, no I mean even more fantastic than he normally looks. He’s slimmed down, like many drivers, because the KERS system has added weight to the cars and that means weight has to come off the drivers. Nico also said that he was relishing the challenge of the new rules with all the buttons to press and front wings to adjust. He feels that F1 is moving even more towards the intelligent drivers and he’s keen to position himself as a driver with a great interest in and feel for, the technology.

Frank said that he thinks the Honda team will be on the grid in Melbourne in some guise or other, Adam added that the fact that they are still making things for the car, planning a shakedown test next week ahead of an appearance at Barcelona test the week after, shows that Honda are serious about the proposals in front of them.
Looking at the opposition, Frank said that he thought Red Bull look particularly strong. Sam Michael pointed out that the RBR car was more developed at launch than other cars, but that other teams had major upgrades planned before Mclbourne, so you could really only judge at the first race.

Everyone agreed that it’s very close with no more than 3-4/10ths of a second separating the cars which have tested so far. That’s mind blowing if you think about it. Sam also said that Williams are not ready with the KERS system and hope to bring it to the car soon. He reckons BMW and McLaren are the two teams who are most bullish about their KERS systems and are most likely to use them in Australia.

One interesting undercurrent I picked up was that there is some muttering about the Renault engine. They were down on power last season and were allowed by the other teams to bring their motor up to speed with the others. This was done on trust through a FOTA agreement, whereby each manufacturer presented its power curve and they all agreed what Renault should be allowed to increase by. The implication is that perhaps the power curve they demonstrated at the start was a little lower than the reality….and so they may actually be a little ahead of the others now! This would also help Red Bull as they use the Renault motor.

Sam said that the adjustable front wing was going to make a bigger difference to overtaking than he and others had anticipated, Apparently the drivers can get really close to a car in front through a fast corner onto a straight and that makes passing very possible,. It will be circuit dependent of course and Shanghai for example, with the long fast corner onto the long straight will see a lot more passing. Same with Bahrain.

The boost from the KERS button adds 5mph to a car’s straight line speed so the cars which start the season with KERS will be able to take even more advantage of the adjustable front wing for passing.

Final note, Frank was very unhappy about the BBC News coverage of the RBS pulls out of F1 in 2010 story yesterday. He felt it was far too doom and gloom and also not accurate in its depiction of the facts of the story. I didn’t see it, so I cannot comment, I was engrossed in Liverpool vs Real Madrid football match, which had a good outcome as far as I’m concerned.

To sum up, Williams seem quietly confident about the season ahead, the car seems to be going quite well in testing and the key for them is going to be to take their chances when they arise this year on the tracks they always go well on, the street tracks for example.

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Rosberg wins F1 drivers poker frenzy

Several F1 drivers took part in a televised poker tournament, broadcast here in Italy the other day, with Nico Rosberg emerging as the guy who knows when to hold ’em and when to fold ’em. He won the tournament ahead of Robert Kubica and Giancarlo Fisichella.

Poker has become a craze for F1 drivers in the last couple of seasons, started by Fisi and Kubica, with a regular game going on the table in the Force India motorhome, featuring Fernando Alonso, Bernie Ecclestone, Vijay Mallya and Rubens Barrichello as regulars.

The TV tournament was also contested by Eddie Irvine (who wore shades, as you would expect, so as not to give anything away!), Tonio Liuzzi, Alex Zanardi, Giorgio Pantano and Adrian Sutil.

The Gazzetta dello sport newspaper did a nice interview with Fisi today and he revealed that Kubica is the toughest F1 person to play against because you never know when he’s bluffing. Let’s hope he has a fast enough car this year to use some of that Cool Hand Luke sang froid on his title rivals..

Fisi also said that he was looking forward to getting his hands on the new Force India car, equipped with the Mercedes engine and McLaren gearbox later this month. He expects to be out at the two March tests before Melbourne. I’ll be interested to see how deep the technical collaboration runs between the two teams, and there is little doubt that Force India should move forward a bit as a result of this collaboration, although their own aerodynamic work will be decisive.

As for the talk of a Grand Prix in Rome in 2011, which people here are getting increasingly excited about, he said that it would be lovely, but he just hopes he’s still in F1 in 2011. He sees the revolving door coming closer..

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